


we too (three) could be glorious

by Lise



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cunnilingus, Everybody Lives, Explicit Sexual Content, Fix-It, Introspection, Multi, Post-Canon, Threesome - F/F/M, Vaginal Sex, new fandoms are scary, what do you mean incest and murder are a big deal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 08:14:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14613780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: Lucille makes a different choice, when it comes to Edith Cushing. They leave Allerdale Hall behind, but without an anchor Lucille thinks she might drift away.Thomas and Edith will provide that anchor.





	we too (three) could be glorious

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/gifts).



> Written for the lovely [gaslightgallows](http://gaslightgallows.tumblr.com) as a very belated birthday present. Because the world could always use more of this threesome, and after rewatching recently I remembered how much a) I feel that way and b) I love Lucille Sharpe and want the best things for her. She's my murder girlfriend. One of them. (As opposed to my [actual girlfriend](http://ameliarating.tumblr.com), who kindly betaed this fic.)
> 
> First try writing in this fandom. I hope it went well.

Away from Allerdale Hall, Lucille felt as though she’d disappear.

For all its poisonous memories, its crumbling walls, its floors seeping red clay, the Hall was her sanctuary. Her world, and even when she and Thomas had ventured outside it was always there, a place of safety, a world where she was master of all fates. Where it was her and Thomas in their own small world, where all others were only temporary interlopers. 

The world outside was not safe, not for them. The world outside was cruel. 

And yet she had been the one to tell them that Allerdale Hall had to be burned to the ground.

 _They have to think we’ve died,_ was the reason she’d given, but it was not the truth, or not the whole of it. If Allerdale Hall still stood, it would always be pulling on her, calling her home.

And yet without it, a part of Lucille did not know who she was.

* * *

Thomas had held her hands in his, eyes wide, and said _together, we can do this, let it end, aren’t you tired, Lucille, Lucille, my love-_

 _You swore,_ she’d hissed. _You swore it would be us, forever._

 _And it will be,_ Thomas said, with all the fervent belief of the innocent he’d always been. (Compared to her, at least. Lucille had sacrificed her innocence so he could keep his, and accounted it a fair trade.) _Edith loves you._

An animal was shrieking in Lucille’s chest, clawing at her throat. Seeing Thomas drift away from her. She remembered how it had felt, sinking the axe into dear Beatrice’s skull. _I killed our mother for standing between us. Do you think I would do less for this girl, this butterfly?_

Something shone in Thomas’s eyes. Reflected light. She’d seen it - felt it - pressing against her shadow. 

_I am already lost._

_Then tell her,_ she’d said. _Tell her the truth. About us._

Thomas’s expression flickered, then steadied. He lifted his chin. _I will._

Lucille wanted to smile. She wanted to weep. She thought, this once, she might grieve for one of these women who thought they could have her brother, not knowing he was already hers.

So she had waited, waited for Thomas to come back to her, and she would hold him and soothe him, tend his hurts as she always had, take care of their problems as she always had. But it was Edith who came first.

 _Lucille,_ she said, her voice soft, but there was no hesitation in her gaze, only determination. Lucille lifted her chin and smiled.

She would not be ashamed.

Just a touch of nerves. So brief. Then Edith Cushing stepped forward, hands light as butterfly wings where she cupped Lucille’s face, lips clumsy where they met hers. 

She kissed like a virgin, even if Lucille knew she was not. Not anymore.

When Edith drew back, Lucille stared at her, thoughts blank. Her mouth felt warm, the rest of her strangely cold. 

_Lucille,_ Edith said again, and her hands were still outstretched. _Will you let me in?_

She had carved all the softness away long ago: in beatings, in neglect, in the asylum with all its horrors she’d never spoken. Leaving just enough for Thomas, who knew all her scars and all the hideous things she’d done and loved her in spite of them, loved her because of them. No other pity. No other mercy. 

And yet. And _yet._

Edith’s fingers brushed against hers. _Lucille,_ she said again. 

She took Edith’s hands, the rustling of moth’s wings loud in her ears.

* * *

They went to Paris. 

Neither she nor Thomas had ever been before. Lucille had never cared for cities: the noise, the people, the stench. Their journeys to London, Edinburgh, Milan, Buffalo - necessities, to be sure, but not appealing ones. Always, she’d awaited their return home. 

Home was ashes now. 

Edith bloomed. Naturally. Edith Cushing, now Sharpe, and Lucille still could not always decide if she had been a mistake or a gift. If Lucille had been as much a fool as those women Thomas had caught with a smile and a few kind words, to be seduced by a dreamer. A _writer,_ of all things. 

She should have known she was dangerous. 

(The thought was almost fond.)

“I’d like to see the catacombs,” Edith said. “The Parisians have been burying their dead there since 1785.”

Thomas let out a startled little laugh. “And you want to see them?” 

Edith’s face set in that determined little expression that Lucille imagined she must have had since the first time someone had dared tell her what she could and could not do. “Yes,” she said. “I would.”

Neither of them, it seemed, had the nerve to refuse her. 

It was not until they entered the Catacombs that Lucille realized her mistake. Not the bones - what were thousands of anonymous Parisians to her, who has killed with her own hands - but the darkness, the weight of the ceiling above, the stone walls closing in. 

Her lungs began to shrink. Once again she was in the asylum, the only thing worse than being alone ( _Thomas, where are you_ ) when she was not alone.

Sweat prickled on her skin. Her throat closed. One of the skulls in the wall leered at her and she met its empty gaze. 

They were outside, Thomas standing glaring at a couple passing by and staring openly, Edith holding Lucille’s hand between two of her own and studying her face with transparent worry. 

“Lucille?” She said. Lucille pulled her hand away, feeling foolish, humiliated. 

“I am fine,” she said. 

Thomas reached out and she drew away from him as well, standing. His hurt showed in the tilt of his eyebrows, the shape of his mouth, and she turned away so she didn’t see it. She almost thought to tell them to go back, to leave her and go wandering through the grisly collection of human detritus, but another part of her shrieked in terror that they would agree and leave her truly alone. And if they stayed - she did not think she could accept their pity. 

* * *

It should be - Thomas promised it would be - _we, us._ But too often Lucille felt it was _they_ and _me._ If Edith was sunlight, Thomas might be dusk, but Lucille was blackest midnight. _You wicked girl,_ dear mother used to say, and for all she was a monster (like her) Lucille thought she might have seen aright. 

Loneliness chewed at her, even lying in bed next to them, and she rose alone, wishing for a piano, the keys under her fingers. 

They left Paris for Marseille. On the train, Edith laid a hand on her elbow, leaning toward her. “Lucille,” she said. “Are you well?” 

She turned her head toward her, unsmiling. “I don’t much care for trains.”

Lucille saw the worried glance Edith threw in Thomas’s direction. Perhaps, she thought darkly, they thought she was going mad. 

She wanted to look to Thomas, to seek out the comfort he’d always given her. But she was afraid he would turn away.

* * *

Thomas and Edith were planning something. 

They were trying to be secretive about it, but she knew every one of Thomas’s tells, and she was learning Edith’s quickly - she wasn’t much of a liar. 

She watched them both in the mirror as she brushed out her hair with slow, even, strokes, counting each one. 

Edith walked over on quiet feet. “May I?” She asked, extending a hand for the brush, and Lucille gave it to her.

“You have the loveliest hair,” Edith said, brushing through it a section at a time. Lucille relaxed into it, almost reluctantly: she knew she was holding back but was unwilling to stop. 

“Thank you,” she said. Edith leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and reached over to set the brush back down. Lucille could see her in the mirror, Edith’s face close to hers, their eyes meeting in their reflection for a moment before Edith straightened. Her fingers brushed against Lucille’s collarbone and then drew away.

“Come to bed,” she said. Lucille raised her eyebrows, looking at Edith only in the mirror. 

“I wasn’t finished.”

“Even still.” 

Lucille glanced over her shoulder and saw both Thomas and Edith looking at her. Her skin prickled; Thomas’s smile sought to reassure her but could not entirely dispel her sudden unease. 

“Lucille,” he said, with that small, secret, smile of his, the one that barely touched his lips but crinkled his eyes at the corners. It melted her. It always had.

She walked slowly over to the bed. Thomas stood and she stepped in toward him, a familiar choreographed dance: drawing in close and sliding her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck. He kissed her more gently than she would have done, his hands just barely brushing her waist. 

“Turn,” he murmured on her mouth, and Lucille opened her eyes (when had she closed them?) and turned to see Edith, her eyes bright, watching. Something stirred in Lucille’s belly and she wanted to pull Thomas back toward her, kiss him savage and hard with Edith’s eyes on them both, witnessing. 

Instead, he sat down again and pulled her gently with him, one hand tenderly sweeping her hair off her neck. “You’ve been distant,” he murmured. 

“Have I?” She looked up at Edith, daring her to agree, but she just looked back at her. Meeting Lucille’s eyes with the strength of will she’d feared, for it might match her own.

“You have,” she said. “But wherever you’ve gone...we’re going to bring you back.”

Lucille narrowed her eyes, a little. She would not call it uncertainty, but perhaps another would.

Thomas’s lips brushed against her ear, his breath soft on her skin. She half closed her eyes as he kissed slowly down the line of her neck, rucking her nightgown up her thighs. Not so closed that she could not see Edith kneeling down before her, face upturned, hands brushing lightly against bare skin. 

Thomas pulled her nightgown up higher and Edith inched forward. Lucille started to move to wrap a hand in her golden hair, to pull her mouth to her cunt, but Thomas caught her arm.

“Tonight,” he said, “let her give to you as she wants.” His voice was quiet, vibrating against her neck. Lucille heard her own shuddering exhale. 

“As she wants,” Lucille echoed. “Meaning…”

“Meaning,” Edith said, “tonight is for you.” 

Something prickled, a moth’s wings fluttering in her breast. Edith bent her head and kissed the inside of her knee. One of Thomas’s hands slid down between her legs, pressing down just enough to tease. 

“ _Us,_ ” Thomas said, lips and tongue still moving over her neck. “That’s what this is, remember? I promised, Lucille, all our lives - that hasn’t changed-” 

Edith mouthed up Lucille’s thigh, one hand brushing her long hair out of the way, pausing a moment to look up at her. She was flushed faintly pink, but her lips curved in a smile with nothing shy about it. 

The brush of her tongue was soft as velvet on Lucille’s skin.

Lucille was not made for softness. She was made for the dark and the cold of long winters and crimson snow. Before, it was always almost savage, was delving deep with her tongue and dragging her orgasm from her, her nails cutting crescents in Lucille’s shoulders. It was holding Edith by her hair and riding her face, her heels pressing into her back. 

This - this wasn’t meant for her.

Something fluttered in her throat as Edith breathed against her, the lightest puff of warm, damp, air, and she closed her eyes and bucked against Thomas’s restraining hand. He reached down, chest pressing against her back, and reached down where he could part her with his fingers, holding her open for Edith’s tongue. 

She moaned, only Thomas’s other arm snaked around her waist holding her back from surging forward. She could feel him growing hard against her and rubbed back against him to hear his rough exhale. 

Lucille echoed it with her own shuddering inhale as Edith’s tongue delved deeper into her, testing, tasting, and she felt herself quiver. Quiver. _She._ As though-

Oh, oh _there._

She cried out, and Edith repeated the motion of her tongue, lapping up the wet Lucille could feel turning her slick, and something deep in her hummed, as always, for seeing Edith on her knees for her. But this felt - different, less controlled, like rather than guiding them she was pinned between.

“Lucille,” Thomas said softly, body pressing up against her, and she fought to steady her breathing only to nearly snarl when Edith pulled away. 

It was only to look up at her, though, mouth and chin glistening, and say, “I chose this. Chose _you,_ ” and she heard the deliberate singularity of it: not _you, both of you_ but _you, Lucille._

Something caught and lodged in her chest.

Edith smiled at her, and bent her head back down, tongue stroking through Lucille’s folds. She sank her teeth into her lower lip so she didn’t make a sound. One of Thomas’s hands stroked up over her waist, cupped one of her breasts. She could feel his breathing, hot and unsteady, on her shoulder, his hand squeezing only lightly. Not _enough._

She dug her fingers into his leg. “ _Thomas,_ ” she said, low and fierce, and felt the shiver that went through him. 

“Not this time,” he murmured, though. “You don’t need to demand anything, Lucille. We’re going to give it to you.”

She was glad she was not standing, and not only because Edith had found her clitoris and was sucking at it. Lucille could see that her eyes were closed, the eager motion of her lips and her tongue making her body sing not just for the sensation but for how much she seemed to _want_ her. Something in her had shaken loose and she thought wildly _I’m not ready_ without knowing what she wasn’t ready for. 

This, maybe. Kindness.

Edith might not know her body as Thomas did (yet, her thoughts whispered, _yet_ ) but she was a quick learner. The light flicks of her tongue against Lucille’s clitoris sent shockwaves through her body, sweet shivers of pleasure, and her body rocked in desperate rhythm. She could hear herself gasping, head thrown back, the increasing tension of her body as her orgasm approached - and came, shaking, almost entirely overwhelmed. 

Still trembling, Lucille felt more than heard Thomas’s moan, breath on her shoulder as hot as his cock through her nightgown. Her breathing sounded unsteady, almost shaky. 

_You are not yourself,_ a harsh voice reprimanded her, but just now that did not seem like such an ill thing. She reached down for Edith, pulled her up and dug her nails into her shoulders, devouring her mouth. 

They tumbled onto the bed together. She rolled to be face to face with Thomas as he fumbled his way out of his underclothes. Lucille rocked her body against him to hear him gasp. His hand slid up under her nightgown, up along her thigh, fingers pressing into her skin.

Her leg over his hip, Thomas pressed his mouth to hers as he thrust slowly into her. Lucille gasped, the sweet full sensation, the ever-familiar warmth of his body against hers, his hands framing her face as he kissed her. She felt Edith’s skin on her back, now naked, her hands sliding over Lucille’s hip, her body warm against Lucille’s. Her lips were soft where they touched her shoulder, her fingers sliding down, between her and Thomas. Her fingers teased against Lucille’s clitoris and she moaned against Thomas’s mouth. 

_This,_ she thought, but it didn’t finish. Her hips pressed forward, trying to pull Thomas’s cock deeper; her shoulders were braced against Edith’s softer body. 

Their bodies moved together, Thomas inside her, Edith’s breasts pressed against her back with her fingers offering friction that this position couldn’t quite satisfy. Lucille gasped between them, almost floating in something like bliss. It felt good, it felt strange, it felt overwhelming; she could hear her own breathless cries, barely recognizable as her own. 

Lucille had never surrendered. She fought tooth and nail for everything, all her life, claimed everything she had by force of will.

But she surrendered now. 

* * *

Edith’s fingers combed through her hair. She could hear Thomas humming something, slightly out of tune. Their bodies bracketing hers.

In the winter, she thought distantly, they should go to the Alps. There, the snow would come down clean.


End file.
